I'm looking to build an application that will rely on adding menu extensions to the menu that appears when one right clicks a file or folder. I've heard that you can build it in Python, here are the resources that I am currently looking at:
http://docs.python.org/extending/extending.html
http://docs.python.org/extending/windows.html#building-on-windows
However I'm not quite sure if I'm even looking in the right direction for this kind of stuff. What should I be searching for, and is it possible to build this kind of thing in Python or will I have to learn C#/.NET?
Thanks!
Edit: Looks like these things are called context menus and involves adding entries to the registry in order to associate applications with certain file types. In that case, should I have my application listening in the background for actions from the entry? Also if you know how to do the same thing in OS X or have some nifty cross-platform thing for this, that would be really nifty!
Here is a sample code at Sample code .
Another way is to manipulate the Registry by using the Windows Explorer tool, like the Open with option. Use it to associate a file extension with opening an executable, basically. However, this technique does not add a menu item into Windows Explorer. But it's easier.
Related
As example, I want make simple resizer, where you can select image in explorer and set new dimensions.
It is not possible to modify the Windows Explorer 8 ribbon.
However, add-ins will not be able to plug into the ribbon UI. This was
a difficult engineering choice for us and we expect that many of you
will read this and suggest we add the capability--of course if we
could get it right this time around we would have done that. A big
part of this blog is sharing these choices--tradeoffs--between new
features and adding everything we can dream up and finishing. We also
think the customization we provide and the improvements are worthwhile
this time around.
From here.
I would like to know if there is a way how to use windows choose folder dialog instead of really bad looking one which is in WIX as a default.
Burn: You can replace the whole MSI GUI by using WiX's Burn (bootstrapper and more) featuring a custom bootstrapper application. The bootstrapper application can do "anything" in terms of GUI.
Please see these similar questions & answers:
WIX Installer with modern look and feel
Changing text color to Wix dialogs
Removing Default dialogs from MSI (please check all answers)
MSI: And yes, it should be possible to show the standard Windows directory selection dialog by hooking up a custom action to the MSI dialog's browse button click event - which will then invoke the Windows common dialog for folder section. Then you set the directory property from the custom action using either C++ or C# or even scripts I guess. Never tried scripts. This old C++ project could work with some minor massage. Or maybe the first section here.
I did this many years ago, and as I recall I ran into problems with dialog Z-order. In other words the folder selector dialog showed up underneath the MSI dialogs in some cases. I can't recall what I did to fix it, but I think it involved some dysfunctional send-keys stuff before I concluded that MSI dialogs are fundamentally flawed. I think a smoke test is in order before you waste significant time on it. That is the best advice I can cough up since I haven't tried it in years.
Some Links:
MsiSetExternalUI function
Custom Actions and User Interface
Win32 - Select Directory Dialog from C/C++
Unlike others who wish to add items to the Windows Explorer, I want to display a context menu within my application. Now you may be thinking, the class you are looking for is ContextMenu. Let me show you what I am interested in doing. Please excuse the small images...
Here is what I currently have:
This is what I would like it to be:
Let's get the assumptions out of the way. I've already detected that the user has TortoiseSVN installed and the item they are selecting is under source control.
My research thus far:
Retrieving context menus - This is very useful. This is a c# library for the Windows Explorer (which can retrieve the context menu for a particular folder/file). However, even when testing out the example, it does not retrieve the TortoiseSVN options.
Another context menu retrieval - Almost identical to the previous link (C# code again). Gets the Windows Explorer context menu minus the TortoiseSVN options.
Process to add context menu - I have just started reading these in-depth posts. The answer may be within this text but it is going to take me some time to get through it. If I have any luck with these, I will post back an answer.
User appears to be able to accomplish this - This appears to be a email group that deals with SVN development. Why post it here? Perhaps to prove that this can be done. To quote: "I'm playing with the TSVN shell context menu. I'm using the IContextMenu.QueryContextMenu (C++ code) method to access TSVN shell context menu and then I'm browsing trough the returned menu."
All in all, this seems like it should be a fairly straight forward thing to do and I am just missing one step. Any and all suggestions are welcome. Thanks!
Edits: Trying to make better use of tags and a more focused title
Hopefully the following will get you started
Showing windows (file/directory) context menu in c# winforms
application
The above link contains the following answer that shows something similar to what you want
How do you show the Windows Explorer context menu from a C#
application?
Rather than trying to pull from the Windows Explorer, ultimately I re-implemented the ContextMenu myself. Adding in the direct calls to TortoiseSVN (as previously mentioned). Not the super elegant solution I wanted but it worked of course!
I will note that user oefe pointed out that the main issue could have been due to x86 vs x64 (TortoiseSVN was installed as x64 on my development machine). Other users may want to look into that if they try to accomplish a similar task.
I am interested to know how can I do the same thing that the apllication listed below does:
Start Menu Calculator
I want to know how can I create an custom tab in Start Menu Search and then handle it with my WPF application. It should only be enabled until my application is running.( Just like what The calculator does )
I read something about windows API Code Pack and I downloaded it but I don't know how can I use it. I searched through it but I didn't find anything.( If you know how I could do this using with Windows API Code Pack, please write an example that explains how to do it in C#)
The main exe "Start Menu Calculator.exe" installs a windows hook (using SetWindowsHookEx) into explorer.exe. The hook is implemented as usual in SBLib.dll which is then injected into Windows Explorer's memory space.
This hook searches for window handles belonging to the search box. See a discussion around this here:
How do I get a "handle" on the Windows Search textbox? and probably sub classes the search box windows (if you kill the "Start Menu Calculator.exe" process abruptly, it crashes Windows Explorer too... which kinda confirms this)
It then reacts to key presses, and I suppose it butchers up the result window. In the hierarchies of Windows, I think it's a Window named "Desktop Search Open View", you can get to it with SPY++ under "Start Menu", aside the windows mentioned in the msdn forum above.
So, no nice API behind this nice application. Massive hacks instead :-)
I think however, some level of integration is possible, using documented behavior, with the search box. I have not dug further, but there is the notion of federated search in Windows (Windows 7 Federated Search). I don't see if this would be capable of reacting instantaneously to what the user types in though...
As a side note, if you're also looking for a way to run javascript code from C#, there is a question here on SO that says it all: parse and execute JS by C#
When making Start Menu Calculator I initially tried to use federated search and Managed (.NET) code however you can't integrate into the start menu, only the shell search (for web service based search which lets you return custom results based on a search string). The problem is that the federated search is structured such that all the search data is pre-indexed so for the calculator to work I would have had to pre index every possible calculation! The reason it all works this way is to make sure that clicking the start menu is always fast and responsive (you don't want a web service call everytime you press start in the shell).
I ended up hiring someone to write a native windows app that places a IE control into the Start menu search area and passes the searched text in with the source. All the visual stuff is just css made to look like the start menu rendering and the calculations handled in javascript.
So yes, a bit of a hack but it seems to work and I havent had/heard of any crashing issues so far.
I've been searching for days about this, but haven't found anything.
I am trying to find out how I can add a context menu item to the windows explorer. I do not want it for specific filetypes, BUT I want it to appear on everything inside a specific path.
For example, I want right-click menus of anything inside "C:\folder" to contain this item, but it shouldn't appear outside this folder...
Is that possible?
Any help will be really appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
John.
The normal way this is achieved is to add it to the Registry under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Classes/Folder/Shell
However in your specific case you want to do some preprocessing before it is displayed (eg is it in the specified directory) which wouldn't work with a simple registry alteration.
I think there is a way to force you way into any operation and add a hook to it. I'm talking about old school knowledge now though and I cannot think what the technology would be called. I think its how you would have, for example, forced your way into the rendering engine to put custom skins on normal explorer windows or inject an extra button into the title bar of apps like you used to see back in the day.
It just occurred to me that adding a button to the windows title bar might have given a search starting point, I found this article which refers to subclassing windows components and injecting your own behaviour. I think that is what I'm talking about above:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/wtl/titlebar.aspx
Hope this gives you a new direction to search in.